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SOUTHERN PINES, N.C. – October 2, 2018 /Canna Newswire/ – Dr. James Taylor, M.D., is a board-certified anesthesiologist and a member of the American Board of Anesthesiology with an area of specialty in pain management. Dr. Taylor is founder and president of Integrated Pain Solutions, and founder and CEO of Integrated Hemp Solutions, which manufactures hemp-based CBD medicines.

“On Thursday, September 27, 2018, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took a very small but hugely important step in integrating cannabis-derived medicines into the therapy options available to physicians in the treatment of their patients. The DEA is now allowing cannabis-derived medications to be reclassified from its Schedule 1 – reserved for harmful drugs with no medical benefit such as heroin and LSD – to Schedule 5, the agency’s lowest narcotic classification, and one reserved for drugs that have both a low potential for abuse and which contain limited quantities of narcotics. While the DEA requires that the cannabis-derived drug must also be approved by the FDA in order to be reclassified, the very fact that the DEA is now acknowledging there is medical benefit to be derived from the cannabis plant cannot be understated.

“While it’s exciting on the surface to see both the DEA and FDA move in this direction, this decision today impacts only one drug, Epidiolex, a CBD-based medication created for the treatment of rare forms of epilepsy. Somewhat ironically, Epidiolex is made from hemp sourced in the United Kingdom, and not the United States which has an abundance of hemp grown in virtually every state in the nation.

“This decision by the DEA and FDA will help hundreds of people with Lennox-Gastaut and Dravet syndromes forms of epilepsy by allowing doctors to freely prescribe GW Pharmaceuticals’ Epidiolex. But what the DEA and FDA still seem slow to acknowledge is that hemp-derived CBD products are successfully helping millions more people daily with conditions across a broader spectrum of epilepsy, chronic pain, multiple sclerosis, autism, cancer and more. This decision also sidesteps an important scientific fact: hemp-derived CBD medicine is non-narcotic by default, containing less than 0.3 percent THC, the cannabis compound that makes one ‘high.’

“Now that the DEA has opened the door a small crack, it is my hope they will take a longer look inside and finally agree to give what tens of thousands of licensed, board-certified physicians have been asking for over decades: the freedom to treat our patients with a natural medicine that’s been proven to be safe, effective, non-addictive and non-lethal. While we applaud the DEA for taking this first small step, there’s more work to be done and we encourage the DEA, FDA, lawmakers, medical practitioners and the public to examine the facts, conduct more research and continue allowing people to have access to their safe, natural medicines.”